News, Reviews, and Commentary on all forms of science fiction, fantasy, and horror audio. Audiobooks, audio drama, podcasts; we discuss all of it here. Mystery, crime, and noir audio are also fair game.
New AUTHOR PAGES for your edification and enjoyment.
LEIGH BRACKETT (by request), FREDERIC BROWN (because of a recent Beam Me Up podcast), JAMES PATRICK KELLY (because the old one went AWOL), MACK REYNOLDS (because StarShipSofa’s Aural Delights podcast a short story). Who would you like to see added to our AUTHOR PAGES?
Posted by Jesse Willis
Dragon Page: Cover To Cover has a new interview with Joe Abercrombie (Last Argument of Kings).
Have a listen direct |MP3| or subscribe to their podcast:
http://www.dragonpage.com/podcastC2C.xml
Posted by Charles Tan
The Agony Column has a couple of new recordings from the recent SF in SF:
Kage Baker, Terry Bisson, Richard Bottoms, Joe R. Lansdale, and Rudy Rucker panel discussion |MP3|
Richard Bottoms intro |MP3|
Kage Baker reading |MP3|
You can subscribe to the feed at this URL:
http://trashotron.com/agony/indexes/tac_podcast.xml
Posted by Charles Tan
“Cascadiapoplis,” it sounds like some fictional city between Vancouver and Seattle. Which is appropriate given Michael Hogan’s Vancouver accent (Hogan is originally from Ontario, but his accent sounds Vancouver).
|MP3|
In what I think is the first ever pre-order for an audio exclusive title, Audible.com is offering an immediate novella download for those who Pre-order METAtropolis (set to release on October 21st). By pre-ordering you’ll get the opening novella, In the Forests of the Night by Jay Lake, delivered to your Audible Library immediately. Then, on October 21, 2008, they’ll automatically drop the full, nine-hour audiobook (one download with all five exclusive novellas) into your Audible Library.
Posted by Jesse Willis
From the pages of Astounding Science Fiction’s September 1960 issue comes a workmanlike SF story from one of the minor pitchers of SF. Horace Brown Fyfe (aka Andrew MacDuff) seems to have gotten just 15 or so his SF tales into Astounding over the years. The narrator, on the other hand, has a prolific website, and has even written and recorded his own tales including one about Alex a ‘half parrot and half penguin’ who travels from Tierra del Fuego to an Antarctic island inhabited by ancient Egyptians who hail him as their god incarnate (which reminds me of an episode of Tales Of The Gold Monkey). Here’s the story, read by Roy Trumbull, that caught my ears…
A Transmutation Of Muddles
By Horace Brown Fyfe; Read by Roy Trumbull
2 MP3s – Approx. 39 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: StorySpieler.com
Published: 2008?
A judge is sent to a distant planet to mediate between a spaceship captain and an insurance adjuster. The natives have seized the captain’s spaceship as a gift from the great god Meeg and are turning it into a temple dedicated to Meeg.
Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|
Check out plenty more tales, read by the same dude, over on the StorySpieler website HERE.
Posted by Jesse Willis
LoudLit.org has a sweetly sounding version of Jack London’s classic short story To Build A Fire available for your listening pleasure. I’ve argued this tale is Hard Science Fiction. Even if you don’t agree (you dope), you’ll have to agree that it’s still an awesome story and in the same vein as Tom Godwin’s The Cold Equations. Hard SF set in the Yukon is there anything cooler?
To Build A Fire
By Jack London; Read by Gregg Dugan
1 |MP3| – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LoudLit.org
Published: June 2007
And, after listening check out the terrific commentary for this awesome story over on JackLondons.net.
By the way, in an interesting twist on alternative economic models LoudLit.org appears to use what I’ll call the “happy hostage” model of audiobook production. They record the productions, then release bits of them as the ransom donations come in. Currently ransomed is The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Posted by Jesse Willis